Shit, it's that time of week again: I have dredge up more news. Well, to be honest, I do work in an office during the week. They exist in Nepal. You know, with desks and computers and telephones and stuff. I turn up in the morning, around ten – the kind of hour I can manage, just about – and say hi to my Himal colleagues, make myself a rancid cup of instant coffee, sit before my (yes, my) computer, switch the thing on; and so the fun begins.
My duties are many and random, and vary wildly in interest and importance. At the lowly end of the scale are keywording and updating the address book; I would go into these but I simply can't face it right now. In a similar league is updating 'classifieds' on the Himal website – namely, loading up adds for jobs and awards and suchlike. A good few rungs above these is fact-checking – seeking out corroborating evidence on the web for 'facts' stated within Himal articles; 'two million displaced in Swat', 'Sri Lankan President Rajapakse employs precisely three of his brothers in his cabinet', and so on until I grow weary and contemptuous of truth.
At the top, the lofty pinnacle, lost among the peaks of the high Himalaya, obscured by passing rain clouds, is brief writing. BRIEF WRITING. Oh! The joy, the passion, the adventure, the miscellaneous titbits on UN committee meetings, flowing freely from the bloated udders of the great cow of South Asian geopolitics. In four-to-five hundred word parcels, I keep the masses fed with only the most essential news items from India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Tibet, Bangladesh, Burma, Bhutan, the Maldives, and beyond.
If you think I'm exaggerating a little, take a look here. Or here. If you're hooked already – these things happen – then be sure to check back every week. (It changes!) And some of them have turned up in the print copy of the magazine, albeit without my name attached; it is simply ‘Himal’s take on cross-border news’.
So, that – with a few exciting extras here and there – is pretty much it. I don’t interview politicians or brave arrest and torture to expose dastardly corporations; neither do I get a nice shiny card I can shove in people’s faces (this especially rankles). What I can say is that my knowledge of South Asia – political, cultural, geographical, pharmaceutical, and plenty of other ‘als’ besides – has been building steadily. My ear is ever to the ground, and the information that surfaces ranges from the banal (the development of broadband in Bhutan; well, good for them), the racy (tribal activism in Orissa; multinationals vs. peasants with bows and arrows), to the bizarre (Nepal has recently been landed with a number of Somali refugees, who traveled to Nepal on the belief they were being taken to Naples). I suppose I can now refer to myself as a ‘South Asia hand’ – a title I have sought from the cradle. But perhaps I’m a little too junior. We shall see.
*
Another Saturday, another sweaty bike trip. This time I made a good, clean escape from the city, without repeatedly returning to the ring road. Oh yes; back of the net. I headed south-west to a place called Godavari. Not much of a place, really, as places go, but it backs on to a forest called Phulchowki, in which I made an abortive, muddy foray. Also close by is a sacred spring – the Godavari Kunda – and surrounding temples where diligent Hindus go to fetch karma, and a towering Tibetan monastery in which red-robed monks were performing a puja as I arrived. A great, raucous, chanting, cymbal-clashing, horn-blowing, drum-bashing thing, the Tibetan Buddhist puja; sounding much like a thunderstorm, only less coordinated, it leaves you with the impression that a tantric deity will descend from the clouds and burst through the vast wooden doors, with flaming nostrils and profound inner peace.
The next morning, Suresh came with an idea: in fractured, over-excited English, he suggested that, instead of him running off to shops and then making me lunch, as usually happens, we both eat out at the restaurant where he and his brother work – Mike’s Café, founded by an NGO worker called Mike (I kid you not), now dead from cancer. It was a convivial, overpriced place, heavy with flower pots. It made for a pleasant few hours, and I chatted with Suresh and his brother – his name escapes me – for a good while. I got to know Suresh a little better.
The following information could be discerned from a series of stunted sentences, which floated gracefully in pools of their own meaning: Suresh has been living in Kathmandu for seven years, since he was fourteen, doing odd jobs, mostly in restaurant kitchens; he has ambitions as a chef in a high-class hotel; for the last few years he has been attending an evening school, where he enjoys maths ‘very very much’; his family lives in a village two days bus ride away in eastern Nepal; he goes back there once a year for a Hindu festival in October. His brother told me about a house – or rather, hut – of his near Everest base camp, a few days walk away from any motorable road. He likes to go there on holidays to ‘enjoy nature’. I nodded appreciatively to all of this.
After lunch Suresh showed me where he lived, nearby. He shared a room with his brother; a shoebox: two beds, two desks, a steel cupboard, and barely enough room left for a sedentary cat, let alone a swinging one. But they’d decked the place out like a funky bachelors pad. The walls were proud with posters of Hindu deities, Bollywood babes, and sheaves of paper scrawled with algebra – evidence of Suresh’s zeal for maths, along with the exercise books that overspilled his desk. A window looked out onto a quiet, tree-lined lane, where rubbish floated and dogs slept spreadeagled on hot tarmac. After I’d nodded and smiled at everything, I made my way back to Lainchaur, to my flat, where I tried and failed to think of what to do with the rest of my day.
*
That Wednesday was a holiday; the day certain Hindus annually change their sacred thread, wrapped around the wrist or torso. Suresh proudly showed me his that morning – bound loosely on his wrist. So, cycling again; I headed north. Budhanilkantha appeared after half an hour’s pedalling. A fairly non-descript suburb, dusty and concrete. But there I found Vishnu – in the form of Narayan, the creator of all life, no less – floating on a bed of serpents over a cosmic sea. In statue form, of course, at the centre of a rank, green, hollowed-out pool. It’s one of the valley’s major pilgrimage sites, and the body of Narayan in the pool enclosure – barred to non-Hindus; I got a view from the railings surrounding it – was covered with garlands, loose petals, incense sticks, and other fragrant offerings. The monarchs of Nepal, being incarnations of Vishnu himself, are forbidden upon pain of death to see the statue – a superstition that still pertains, even after the dissolution. Narayan was sleeping when I saw him – he ‘sleeps’ throughout the monsoon months. A festival is held when wakes up, after the rains.
After a painful uphill slug from Budhanilkantha, on a disintegrated ‘road’, I reached the gates of Shivapuri national park, where a bored ticket collector awoke from death to accept my rupees and jot down my name, nationality and passport number. Shivapuri is a dense forest on the valley rim, allegedly containing bears and leopards, and threaded with torturous, muddy, disorientating trails. A few hours in, after failing to find a secluded Buddhist nunnery – now that would have been something – the day hit the shit. I missed too many turnings and got hopelessly lost. I decided not to retrace my steps, stupidly, and pressed on in the same direction. I MUST find an exit sooner or later, I reasoned, if I kept on going. I even asked a young boy – god knows what he was doing there, alone, but anyway – if the trail led back down the valley. ‘Yes sir, twenty minutes.’
It was not twenty minutes; the little bastard. The day grew long; night fell. I could hardly see a thing – it was really that dark – and I had to dismount and wheel the bike down the steep, swampy trail. I crapped myself – figuratively speaking – thinking I’d have to spend the night in the forest, without water, among bears and leopards. But, on the verge of bedding down in the undergrowth, I reached the park gates. They were supposed to shut at seven; it was well past. But some army boys were still hanging around, smoking and chatting. One of them, a submachine gun around his shoulder, got arsey with me about breaking the park rules – no ‘movement’ between dusk and dawn. He probably wanted a bribe, but a superior came out of a hut and cut him short, telling me I could go on. From there, I crawled down a narrow path alongside a pipeline, awkwardly trailing my bike, and eventually reached a small village. I appeared to the locals as a mud-caked, pale-faced apparition, that sprang fully formed out of the night, and vanished swiftly back into it. I cycled through the valley in the pitch darkness.
*
Next weekend came; time was beginning to speed up. For the length of Saturday I languished painfully with a hangover, following a night out in Thamel with Himal colleagues. (What DO they put in those beer bottles?) I only left the flat for dinner. On Sunday, after Suresh came and made order out of my flat, I took another bicycle trip. This time, to Pharping, at the far southern end of the Kathmandu Valley; a Buddhist pilgrimage spot, complete with not-so-isolated hermit caves, and a town that appears to consist mostly of Tibetan exiles.
On the city streets, the army was out in full get up; blue camouflage combat fatigues, submachine guns, riot armour, shields, the works. I believe the Maoists had been up to something, but with so many newly politicised minority groups grinding separate axes on a weekly basis, it’s always hard to say. At one point I was faced with a line of young men fleeing up the street towards me, pursued by a gang of soldiers, Tom and Jerry style. Outside the city, all was quiet.
I would go into that day trip a little more, but I think there’s been quite enough bicycle for one blog post. Suffice to say, it was a pale shadow of the adventure and trauma of Wednesday, when an entire night in a dark forest loomed like the Reaper.
And that, dear readers, is all for now. Ta-ta.
Friday, 7 August 2009
Friday, 31 July 2009
South Asia and the West: a sober analysis
Women have travelled a long way from the kitchen. Now it seems that middle-aged ladies are taking over the world. Take the two Athenas who have recently blazed a trail across South Asia, leaving lines of fawning officials in their wake: Joanna Lumley and Hillary Clinton.
First off, Hillary’s heavenly descent – sorry, visit – to India earlier this month. The sour-faced hag gifted Hindustan a full four days of her time. She reassured the grateful nation that the new, ever so progressive administration of Barack Obama – the first African-American President (!!!), in case you hadn’t been told by the BBC – was committed to building on the bilateral (what a ghastly word) relations successfully established during the dark and evil Bush years. Most of all in nuclear and defence ‘cooperation’ – by which read ‘baying poodle status’ – but also in the lesser areas of education, agriculture, healthcare and women’s rights.
Later on, as a parting treat, she hectored the developing country on their obligation to cooperate in the fight against climate change – or rather, bankrupt themselves in meeting Obama’s draconian new carbon reduction targets. But, perhaps due to its historic experience of colonialism, India has refused to take this eco-imperialism lying down. The Environment Minister, Jairam Ramesh, bluntly stated that India would accept no binding emission cuts, because they would interfere with its development goals. (For all the Bright New India propaganda you hear in the West, India still has more desperately poor people – living on less than 1.25 US dollars a day – than exist in the entire African continent.)
Industrialisation, urbanisation, increased mobility, and all else that led to the levels of wealth we (still) enjoy in the West, are, of course, anathema to fighting global warming. It is therefore the unspoken wish of the Al Gore Army – fed on romantic notions of nature-attuned self-sufficiency; erring rather too close to Pol Pot, something of a proto-Green himself – that people-heavy nations such as India remain backward, immobile and overwhelmingly rural. For them, the sight of sky-scrapers shooting up in Bombay spells imminent ecological doom, rather than increased prosperity. The misanthropy behind this view of human progress seems to be entirely lost on the Western liberal press.
But I digress; now on to Kathmandu, which last week played host to the infinitely more delectable Joanna Lumley. The English national treasure arrived last Sunday to be received by hundreds of Gurkhas and general enthusiasts at the Tribhuvan international airport, wielding signs reading ‘Joanna Lumley, daughter of Nepal’ and ‘here comes goddess Joanna.’ Nothing like a patrician white lady to get the natives excited.
To this spirited welcome she retorted with the Gurkha battle cry – Ayo Gurkhali! – and then delivered a speech filled with such tender sentiments as, ‘My friends of Nepal, I am your family, coming to Nepal for the first time.’ Next she did tea successively with the prime minister, the president and the foreign minister, before venturing on to Pokhara to meet with some notable Gurkha chums or somesuch. Photos of her on arrival, draped in garlands and spouting forth, were lavished over the front page of every paper – although Himal, being a highbrow monthly magazine for deeply serious persons, has deigned not to take note. Nonetheless, her campaign was rather remarkable: her victory – that all Gurkha veterans with four years' service can now settle in the UK – was snatched right from the jaws of a belligerent government. It was certainly a pleasure to witness a husky blonde woman socking it to that dour fat man, Gordon Brown.
Now, I hate to be a bitch about the whole thing – really I do – but something’s been left out of the Gurkha debate in Britain: Nepal itself. Let’s take a little look at history; see what happens. The Gurkhas were co-opted into the Indian Army – the British-run forces in India, the vast majority of which were Indians drawn from the warrior castes – after their defeat in the Anglo-Gurhka Wars of the early nineteenth century. The British may have won, and the Gurkhas did lose substantial territory to the east and west of present day Nepal – for instance, the still highly anglicised hill-stations of Shimla and Darjeeling and their surrounding hills. But the campaign was long and grueling; the British seriously underestimated the courage and ferocity of their opponents. And so impressed were the British that, afterwards, they offered the Gurkhas generous pay to join their forces in the subcontinent. So, from former enemies the British were to gain one of their most formidable allies – just like the Sikhs after them.
But, faced with its bravest and greatest leaving for lucrative foreign employment, Nepal only allowed this co-option on the principle of mutual benefit. It was understood that both Nepal and British India would be enriched by the process. For, after a lifetime of loyal service to the British, the Gurkhas would return to their villages with their army pensions. These villages would receive a sudden injection of wealth; the veterans would use their pensions to buy books and chairs for the local school, facilitate a clean water supply, repair the village temple, and generally better their communities. In a country where the government has next to no presence in the remote villages – from which they have historically been recruited, and often from the most impoverished ethnic groups – retired Gurkhas are an invaluable asset. Mothers are often only willing to let their young sons leave for far off lands to serve, with the possibility that they will never see them again, because they know it will benefit their communities in the long run. If the new settlement option is taken up in a big way, rural Nepal stands to lose out – massively. A wealth drain, no less, guaranteeing further impoverishment. The principle of mutual benefit has effectively been buried.
Now, I’m not suggesting for a moment that Lumley is wrong in asserting the right of retired Gurkhas to settle in Britain. It is unfair that the Gurkhas were denied a retirement option handed to any Commonwealth soldier. That much is clear; and Lumley’s victory over the British government is heroic in its own way. She is still an excellent human being and all that – one I think we’d all be glad to have a gin and tonic with. But the issue is infinitely more complex than the British press has painted it. And that the interest of Nepal has been ignored – studiously or otherwise – is all too typical of our coverage of third world countries; take the adoption fad in Africa. Also unfortunate, and just as unnoticed, is the shift that the Gurkhas have undergone in the public imagination: from fearless fighters, they have now become frail old men, desperately in need of ‘our’ help.
*
Last weekend I took to the bicycle. Why hadn’t I done so before? It is an excellent way to see the Kathmandu Valley – quite possibly the best. On Saturday, I rented a yellow beast with all the right gears from the centre of Thamel – and off I peddled to the far horizon. I tried to enter the Nagargunj forest reserve, just north of the city; I was informed by a gruff army officer – with barely disguised pleasure – that it had just shut for the day. So, not overly put out, I headed further north into the wooded hills. I intended to visit the village of Kakani, but missed the turning and kept heading on the road north. Eventually I turned back, concluding that I wouldn’t reach Tibet by nightfall. So, I didn’t really reach or visit anywhere, but all way the scenery was – how shall put it – sublime.
On Sunday, after Suresh-the-servant-boy’s morning visit, I headed straight back to the bike-rental stand, and set out to explore the southern valley. I tried being clever – rarely a good idea – and took the winding backroads in leaving the city, ingeniously avoiding the main arteries with their honking buses and smoke-belching lorries. But to little success. My sense of direction died soon after I got caught up in the narrow lanes of Patan. Time and time again I ended up back on the ring road; I couldn’t escape the hideous thing – I think there’s a life lesson here. Eventually, after asking a kindly old man with an excellent moustache in a corner shop, I figured out which way was south and got the hell out of the city.
The relief on entering the countryside, with its marshy paddy fields and bent-backed peasants, was immediate. The steep hillsides greeted me like old chums. I got as far as Bungamati, a pretty village whose plentiful hammer-and-sickle graffiti betrayed an allegiance to the Maoists. A mighty chili harvest had clearly just taken place. The locals were busy threading them together with strands of hemp for drying; they dangled from windowsills like long lines of scarlet seaweed. The local school had just ended for the day, and I narrowly avoided mowing down a procession of smartly dressed schoolkids as I threaded the stone alleyways. From Bungamati I crossed the Bagmati River on a sagging bridge and, after a trial-by-fire of disintegrated pathways, joined a tarmac road (!) that led me back to Kathmandu. All told, a fine day in the country.
So, see you lot again in (about) a week.
First off, Hillary’s heavenly descent – sorry, visit – to India earlier this month. The sour-faced hag gifted Hindustan a full four days of her time. She reassured the grateful nation that the new, ever so progressive administration of Barack Obama – the first African-American President (!!!), in case you hadn’t been told by the BBC – was committed to building on the bilateral (what a ghastly word) relations successfully established during the dark and evil Bush years. Most of all in nuclear and defence ‘cooperation’ – by which read ‘baying poodle status’ – but also in the lesser areas of education, agriculture, healthcare and women’s rights.
Later on, as a parting treat, she hectored the developing country on their obligation to cooperate in the fight against climate change – or rather, bankrupt themselves in meeting Obama’s draconian new carbon reduction targets. But, perhaps due to its historic experience of colonialism, India has refused to take this eco-imperialism lying down. The Environment Minister, Jairam Ramesh, bluntly stated that India would accept no binding emission cuts, because they would interfere with its development goals. (For all the Bright New India propaganda you hear in the West, India still has more desperately poor people – living on less than 1.25 US dollars a day – than exist in the entire African continent.)
Industrialisation, urbanisation, increased mobility, and all else that led to the levels of wealth we (still) enjoy in the West, are, of course, anathema to fighting global warming. It is therefore the unspoken wish of the Al Gore Army – fed on romantic notions of nature-attuned self-sufficiency; erring rather too close to Pol Pot, something of a proto-Green himself – that people-heavy nations such as India remain backward, immobile and overwhelmingly rural. For them, the sight of sky-scrapers shooting up in Bombay spells imminent ecological doom, rather than increased prosperity. The misanthropy behind this view of human progress seems to be entirely lost on the Western liberal press.
But I digress; now on to Kathmandu, which last week played host to the infinitely more delectable Joanna Lumley. The English national treasure arrived last Sunday to be received by hundreds of Gurkhas and general enthusiasts at the Tribhuvan international airport, wielding signs reading ‘Joanna Lumley, daughter of Nepal’ and ‘here comes goddess Joanna.’ Nothing like a patrician white lady to get the natives excited.
To this spirited welcome she retorted with the Gurkha battle cry – Ayo Gurkhali! – and then delivered a speech filled with such tender sentiments as, ‘My friends of Nepal, I am your family, coming to Nepal for the first time.’ Next she did tea successively with the prime minister, the president and the foreign minister, before venturing on to Pokhara to meet with some notable Gurkha chums or somesuch. Photos of her on arrival, draped in garlands and spouting forth, were lavished over the front page of every paper – although Himal, being a highbrow monthly magazine for deeply serious persons, has deigned not to take note. Nonetheless, her campaign was rather remarkable: her victory – that all Gurkha veterans with four years' service can now settle in the UK – was snatched right from the jaws of a belligerent government. It was certainly a pleasure to witness a husky blonde woman socking it to that dour fat man, Gordon Brown.
Now, I hate to be a bitch about the whole thing – really I do – but something’s been left out of the Gurkha debate in Britain: Nepal itself. Let’s take a little look at history; see what happens. The Gurkhas were co-opted into the Indian Army – the British-run forces in India, the vast majority of which were Indians drawn from the warrior castes – after their defeat in the Anglo-Gurhka Wars of the early nineteenth century. The British may have won, and the Gurkhas did lose substantial territory to the east and west of present day Nepal – for instance, the still highly anglicised hill-stations of Shimla and Darjeeling and their surrounding hills. But the campaign was long and grueling; the British seriously underestimated the courage and ferocity of their opponents. And so impressed were the British that, afterwards, they offered the Gurkhas generous pay to join their forces in the subcontinent. So, from former enemies the British were to gain one of their most formidable allies – just like the Sikhs after them.
But, faced with its bravest and greatest leaving for lucrative foreign employment, Nepal only allowed this co-option on the principle of mutual benefit. It was understood that both Nepal and British India would be enriched by the process. For, after a lifetime of loyal service to the British, the Gurkhas would return to their villages with their army pensions. These villages would receive a sudden injection of wealth; the veterans would use their pensions to buy books and chairs for the local school, facilitate a clean water supply, repair the village temple, and generally better their communities. In a country where the government has next to no presence in the remote villages – from which they have historically been recruited, and often from the most impoverished ethnic groups – retired Gurkhas are an invaluable asset. Mothers are often only willing to let their young sons leave for far off lands to serve, with the possibility that they will never see them again, because they know it will benefit their communities in the long run. If the new settlement option is taken up in a big way, rural Nepal stands to lose out – massively. A wealth drain, no less, guaranteeing further impoverishment. The principle of mutual benefit has effectively been buried.
Now, I’m not suggesting for a moment that Lumley is wrong in asserting the right of retired Gurkhas to settle in Britain. It is unfair that the Gurkhas were denied a retirement option handed to any Commonwealth soldier. That much is clear; and Lumley’s victory over the British government is heroic in its own way. She is still an excellent human being and all that – one I think we’d all be glad to have a gin and tonic with. But the issue is infinitely more complex than the British press has painted it. And that the interest of Nepal has been ignored – studiously or otherwise – is all too typical of our coverage of third world countries; take the adoption fad in Africa. Also unfortunate, and just as unnoticed, is the shift that the Gurkhas have undergone in the public imagination: from fearless fighters, they have now become frail old men, desperately in need of ‘our’ help.
*
Last weekend I took to the bicycle. Why hadn’t I done so before? It is an excellent way to see the Kathmandu Valley – quite possibly the best. On Saturday, I rented a yellow beast with all the right gears from the centre of Thamel – and off I peddled to the far horizon. I tried to enter the Nagargunj forest reserve, just north of the city; I was informed by a gruff army officer – with barely disguised pleasure – that it had just shut for the day. So, not overly put out, I headed further north into the wooded hills. I intended to visit the village of Kakani, but missed the turning and kept heading on the road north. Eventually I turned back, concluding that I wouldn’t reach Tibet by nightfall. So, I didn’t really reach or visit anywhere, but all way the scenery was – how shall put it – sublime.
On Sunday, after Suresh-the-servant-boy’s morning visit, I headed straight back to the bike-rental stand, and set out to explore the southern valley. I tried being clever – rarely a good idea – and took the winding backroads in leaving the city, ingeniously avoiding the main arteries with their honking buses and smoke-belching lorries. But to little success. My sense of direction died soon after I got caught up in the narrow lanes of Patan. Time and time again I ended up back on the ring road; I couldn’t escape the hideous thing – I think there’s a life lesson here. Eventually, after asking a kindly old man with an excellent moustache in a corner shop, I figured out which way was south and got the hell out of the city.
The relief on entering the countryside, with its marshy paddy fields and bent-backed peasants, was immediate. The steep hillsides greeted me like old chums. I got as far as Bungamati, a pretty village whose plentiful hammer-and-sickle graffiti betrayed an allegiance to the Maoists. A mighty chili harvest had clearly just taken place. The locals were busy threading them together with strands of hemp for drying; they dangled from windowsills like long lines of scarlet seaweed. The local school had just ended for the day, and I narrowly avoided mowing down a procession of smartly dressed schoolkids as I threaded the stone alleyways. From Bungamati I crossed the Bagmati River on a sagging bridge and, after a trial-by-fire of disintegrated pathways, joined a tarmac road (!) that led me back to Kathmandu. All told, a fine day in the country.
So, see you lot again in (about) a week.
Thursday, 23 July 2009
Valley blues
On Saturday, I at last got round to visiting the (now-vacated) Royal Palace, which happens to sit rather near my flat – nice area, don’t you know. It’s been only a few months since the Shah royal family upped sticks and went god-knows-where. Having been kept at the gates and thrown scraps of meat in the decades beforehand, Nepalis are now rocking up in hordes to get a look to get a look at the home of their former masters. There was a huge snaking queue when I got there but, being a whitie foreigner, I was ushered in through a side-entrance, where I had to pay substantially more for a ticket than the native punter.
From the outside, it looks like a blown-up Thunderbirds set. Oversized, bright-pink – yes, pink – ‘futuristic,’ child-like. An earnest exercise in Art Deco vulgarity. (Disclaimer: Art Deco can be excellent, but Asian stabs at it tend to be shit; see also the modern palace of the Maharajah of Jodhpur in Rajasthan.) Inside, the kitsch continues – but in a fun, less obnoxious way. Tiger skins, jewelled sewing machines, oversized portraits of past Kings in military regalia, precious odds and sods from around the world. It’s rather like the underground lair of a villain in a 60s Bond movie, only without the piranha pool under the dining room (although that might explain a few of the political ‘disappearances’ in recent years).
You can also poke around the palace grounds. Here, the most interesting/disquieting ‘attraction’ is the foundations of a former palace hall, now demolished – the venue of a certain royal gathering in 2001. Yes, the Royal Massacre. At a family bash on 1st June that year, all was going merrily, when Crown Prince Dipendra suddenly grew faint and retired to his bedroom. A little while later he returned in camouflage fatigues and, machine gun in each hand, opened fire on his immediate family, targeting and killing the King first, then others. Running out into the garden, he shot his mother (the Queen) and, finally, himself. Little white signposts now mark the death-spots of the royal victims, gunned down one by one. There’s still something creepy about the place.
It’s hard to fathom the national trauma that followed. For Nepali Hindus, the King is regarded as an incarnation of Vishnu; and the Royal family is inextricably bound with the birth of Nepal as a nation, what with the Gurkha invasions that unified Nepal as we know it. It is still something of a whispered subject in Nepal, but speculations abound. Many put it down to Dipendra’s frustration at not being able to marry Devyani Rana, the woman he loved, through the callous obstruction of his mother.
But that the palace was made immune to investigation swiftly after the incident, with all evidence destroyed or compromised, has stoked wild conspiracy theories. Some point to the fact that the later King, Gyandra, was alone among the immediate family in being away that evening – and his son, Paras, who was present, escaped unscathed. It certainly ensured Gyandra’s coronation soon after, unlikely to have ever happened otherwise. Others blame it on the revolutionary Maoists, for obvious reasons. The Maoists in turn point to the CIA and its Indian counterpart. Others maintain that whoever was behind it bumped off Dipendra beforehand and planted a stand-in wearing a life-like mask in his place – which would at least account for why Dipendra (allegedly) remained silent and expressionless throughout. But, as the wilder theories suggest, the public has been left firmly in the dark, with only tawdry white sign-posts to go by.
*
Next day, I took a shitty-cramped mini-van to Kirtipur, a town in the Kathmandu Valley. Weird Place. Rather eerie. Demonic-looking children stared at me from dilapidated houses, murmuring curses as I passed – as it seemed. Old men sat about on the pavements in traditional Newari costume – black waistcoat, earrings, that ubiquitous multi-coloured cloth hat – doing precisely nothing. Time seemed to have stood still in Kirtipur; certainly a step or two behind the rest of the valley in ‘development.’ And half a world away from the bouncy, enterprising (ish) capital. But it is overshadowed by one of the more sinister episodes in Nepali history:
Kirtipur was established back in the twelfth century, as a westerly outpost of Patan city state. But it had achieved a nominal independence by the time Prithvi Narayan Shah and his Gurkha hordes began their final conquest of the Kathmandu Valley in 1767. Prithvi Narayan – himself born and bred in Kirtipur – was hell bent on winning this highly strategic hill-top fortress. After one failed Gurkha assault and a later six-month siege, Kirtipur surrendered on the expectation of merciful treatment. But the Gurkha King wasn’t having that: instead, he ordered his men to hack off the nose and lips of every man and boy, sparing only musicians who played wind instruments. Eighty pounds worth of noses and lips were dumped in front of Prithvi Narayan as ‘proof.’
This historic hurt is still felt by Kirtipur’s impoverished denizens; to this day the Queen and King – directly descended from Prithvi Narayan Shah – are forbidden from setting foot in the town. As a memorial, the swords and machetes of the men who defended Kirtipur in the six-month siege still dangle from the roof of the Bagh Bharaib temple in the town centre.
Afterwards, I walked – or rather, threaded my way delicately through rice paddies – to the Chobar gorge. Not much of a gorge, as gorges go, but it’s a star player in Nepal’s folklore. It was created by one slice of the sword of the bodhisattva Manjushri, back in the aeons when the Kathmandu Valley was one great lake full of poisonous snakes. This epic sword-hack drained the valley of the water and nasty snakes – and civilisation began promptly. (See my third blog post for a more fleshed-out take on the story.) Now, this bit of myth doesn’t lean too heavily on science or anything, but archaeological research suggests it isn’t complete fancy: the Kathmandu Valley really was a lake, back in the day; and the Chobar gorge – the exit-point of the Bagmati river – is the obvious drainage site in the valley. That said, archaeologists have yet to stumble across a giant, pre-historic sword.
A wobbly suspension bridge affords a shit-scary view, but most interesting was a plaque on the bridge itself: Made in Aberdeen. From there I trekked up a steep path to Chobar village – definitely the most picturesque village I’ve seen in the valley; prime post-card material. In what is becoming a routine for me on entering Nepali villages, chirpy kids bounced out of doorways and demanded ‘one pen, one pen, one pen.’ Dunno, maybe there’s a chronic pen shortage in the Kathmandu Valley; maybe a heavy pen-tax makes them unaffordable. In any case – and this may come as a surprise – I don’t march around Nepal with a selection of pens in my pockets. Perhaps I should; give something back and all that.
Chobar village falls gently down a hill; at the crest is the idiosyncratic Adinath temple, whose outer walls are smothered with pots, pans, jugs and the like. Local tradition has it that offering kitchen utensils to Lokeshwar, the temple’s deity, guarantees a long-lasting, happy marriage for newlyweds. Let’s just hope all the crockery pays off.
It was around seven when I climbed back down to the highway, just in time to watch the last bus of the day pull up and go – well within shrieking and furious-waving distance. Balls. I stood there, mournfully, until a Nepali chap heading in vaguely the right direction took pity and offered to take me on the back of his motorbike to Kathmandu’s outskirts, from where I took a cab back to my flat. Just like that.
*
In the evenings, on the balcony of my Kathmandu penthouse – okay, fourth-storey flat – everything begins to make sense, fall into place, become real – and so on till the clichés run out. It is a kingly view; I am lord of all I survey. Steep hillsides sweep the city fringes, darkening into cut-out silhouettes as the night comes. Paper kites float above a patchwork of concrete rooftops, giving way to rice-paddies on the valley edges. Matchbox vegetable gardens stretch right to the city centre. There is a mess of sounds: shrieking kids, dogs, crows, car-horn; a city out of balance. I take a swig of a large bottle of Gorkha beer, and think of England.
And so the novel would begin – if it were a novel; which, I’ve decided, it isn’t quite.
From the outside, it looks like a blown-up Thunderbirds set. Oversized, bright-pink – yes, pink – ‘futuristic,’ child-like. An earnest exercise in Art Deco vulgarity. (Disclaimer: Art Deco can be excellent, but Asian stabs at it tend to be shit; see also the modern palace of the Maharajah of Jodhpur in Rajasthan.) Inside, the kitsch continues – but in a fun, less obnoxious way. Tiger skins, jewelled sewing machines, oversized portraits of past Kings in military regalia, precious odds and sods from around the world. It’s rather like the underground lair of a villain in a 60s Bond movie, only without the piranha pool under the dining room (although that might explain a few of the political ‘disappearances’ in recent years).
You can also poke around the palace grounds. Here, the most interesting/disquieting ‘attraction’ is the foundations of a former palace hall, now demolished – the venue of a certain royal gathering in 2001. Yes, the Royal Massacre. At a family bash on 1st June that year, all was going merrily, when Crown Prince Dipendra suddenly grew faint and retired to his bedroom. A little while later he returned in camouflage fatigues and, machine gun in each hand, opened fire on his immediate family, targeting and killing the King first, then others. Running out into the garden, he shot his mother (the Queen) and, finally, himself. Little white signposts now mark the death-spots of the royal victims, gunned down one by one. There’s still something creepy about the place.
It’s hard to fathom the national trauma that followed. For Nepali Hindus, the King is regarded as an incarnation of Vishnu; and the Royal family is inextricably bound with the birth of Nepal as a nation, what with the Gurkha invasions that unified Nepal as we know it. It is still something of a whispered subject in Nepal, but speculations abound. Many put it down to Dipendra’s frustration at not being able to marry Devyani Rana, the woman he loved, through the callous obstruction of his mother.
But that the palace was made immune to investigation swiftly after the incident, with all evidence destroyed or compromised, has stoked wild conspiracy theories. Some point to the fact that the later King, Gyandra, was alone among the immediate family in being away that evening – and his son, Paras, who was present, escaped unscathed. It certainly ensured Gyandra’s coronation soon after, unlikely to have ever happened otherwise. Others blame it on the revolutionary Maoists, for obvious reasons. The Maoists in turn point to the CIA and its Indian counterpart. Others maintain that whoever was behind it bumped off Dipendra beforehand and planted a stand-in wearing a life-like mask in his place – which would at least account for why Dipendra (allegedly) remained silent and expressionless throughout. But, as the wilder theories suggest, the public has been left firmly in the dark, with only tawdry white sign-posts to go by.
*
Next day, I took a shitty-cramped mini-van to Kirtipur, a town in the Kathmandu Valley. Weird Place. Rather eerie. Demonic-looking children stared at me from dilapidated houses, murmuring curses as I passed – as it seemed. Old men sat about on the pavements in traditional Newari costume – black waistcoat, earrings, that ubiquitous multi-coloured cloth hat – doing precisely nothing. Time seemed to have stood still in Kirtipur; certainly a step or two behind the rest of the valley in ‘development.’ And half a world away from the bouncy, enterprising (ish) capital. But it is overshadowed by one of the more sinister episodes in Nepali history:
Kirtipur was established back in the twelfth century, as a westerly outpost of Patan city state. But it had achieved a nominal independence by the time Prithvi Narayan Shah and his Gurkha hordes began their final conquest of the Kathmandu Valley in 1767. Prithvi Narayan – himself born and bred in Kirtipur – was hell bent on winning this highly strategic hill-top fortress. After one failed Gurkha assault and a later six-month siege, Kirtipur surrendered on the expectation of merciful treatment. But the Gurkha King wasn’t having that: instead, he ordered his men to hack off the nose and lips of every man and boy, sparing only musicians who played wind instruments. Eighty pounds worth of noses and lips were dumped in front of Prithvi Narayan as ‘proof.’
This historic hurt is still felt by Kirtipur’s impoverished denizens; to this day the Queen and King – directly descended from Prithvi Narayan Shah – are forbidden from setting foot in the town. As a memorial, the swords and machetes of the men who defended Kirtipur in the six-month siege still dangle from the roof of the Bagh Bharaib temple in the town centre.
Afterwards, I walked – or rather, threaded my way delicately through rice paddies – to the Chobar gorge. Not much of a gorge, as gorges go, but it’s a star player in Nepal’s folklore. It was created by one slice of the sword of the bodhisattva Manjushri, back in the aeons when the Kathmandu Valley was one great lake full of poisonous snakes. This epic sword-hack drained the valley of the water and nasty snakes – and civilisation began promptly. (See my third blog post for a more fleshed-out take on the story.) Now, this bit of myth doesn’t lean too heavily on science or anything, but archaeological research suggests it isn’t complete fancy: the Kathmandu Valley really was a lake, back in the day; and the Chobar gorge – the exit-point of the Bagmati river – is the obvious drainage site in the valley. That said, archaeologists have yet to stumble across a giant, pre-historic sword.
A wobbly suspension bridge affords a shit-scary view, but most interesting was a plaque on the bridge itself: Made in Aberdeen. From there I trekked up a steep path to Chobar village – definitely the most picturesque village I’ve seen in the valley; prime post-card material. In what is becoming a routine for me on entering Nepali villages, chirpy kids bounced out of doorways and demanded ‘one pen, one pen, one pen.’ Dunno, maybe there’s a chronic pen shortage in the Kathmandu Valley; maybe a heavy pen-tax makes them unaffordable. In any case – and this may come as a surprise – I don’t march around Nepal with a selection of pens in my pockets. Perhaps I should; give something back and all that.
Chobar village falls gently down a hill; at the crest is the idiosyncratic Adinath temple, whose outer walls are smothered with pots, pans, jugs and the like. Local tradition has it that offering kitchen utensils to Lokeshwar, the temple’s deity, guarantees a long-lasting, happy marriage for newlyweds. Let’s just hope all the crockery pays off.
It was around seven when I climbed back down to the highway, just in time to watch the last bus of the day pull up and go – well within shrieking and furious-waving distance. Balls. I stood there, mournfully, until a Nepali chap heading in vaguely the right direction took pity and offered to take me on the back of his motorbike to Kathmandu’s outskirts, from where I took a cab back to my flat. Just like that.
*
In the evenings, on the balcony of my Kathmandu penthouse – okay, fourth-storey flat – everything begins to make sense, fall into place, become real – and so on till the clichés run out. It is a kingly view; I am lord of all I survey. Steep hillsides sweep the city fringes, darkening into cut-out silhouettes as the night comes. Paper kites float above a patchwork of concrete rooftops, giving way to rice-paddies on the valley edges. Matchbox vegetable gardens stretch right to the city centre. There is a mess of sounds: shrieking kids, dogs, crows, car-horn; a city out of balance. I take a swig of a large bottle of Gorkha beer, and think of England.
And so the novel would begin – if it were a novel; which, I’ve decided, it isn’t quite.
Wednesday, 15 July 2009
The tanned man’s burden
It’s a common disease of the tropics, on a par with malaria and dengue fever. ‘If I’ syndrome. It isn’t deadly – as far as I’ve heard – but infection among well-meaning whites is a nigh-on certainty. You don’t notice it at first; it just creeps up on you. But, with forewarning, you can spot it in its early stages.
You arrive in a third world country, you check the place out, go for a walk or whatever. And then it happens. You look at the mess around you – the badly behaved traffic, the sincere lack of dustbins, the dirt-caked street urchins, the emaciated pariah dogs – and a monologue comes to life in your head. ‘If I was in charge, I would do….I would introduce…I would ban…I would round up and shoot…’ It’s a high-pitched, cut-glass voice which clears its throat and starts up whenever you step outside; and it refuses to pipe down. If it wore a hat, it would be a pith helmet. A colonial hangover, a nannying impulse, the irrepressible conviction – embarrassing though it may be to the liberal mindset – that it is precisely you and your expertise, gleaned from a first world upbringing, that this benighted country needs in order to do things ‘correctly.’ The very same voice must have plagued the British East India Company, when they first decided that extending their dominion beyond the banks of the Hoogly wasn’t such a terribly bad idea. It is, ultimately, a refusal to accept things for how they are.
I thought I’d eradicated my (particularly virulent) strand of ‘If I’ syndrome during my seventh months travelling in Asia in 2007 – and this took long enough. But it was merely laying dormant, ready to erupt as soon as I stepped off the plane in Kathmandu. Like syphilis, you think it’s gone, but then it comes back and fucks up your brain. But, after a month, I think I’ve managed to tame it. This is largely through talking to Nepali people; who, you soon discover, are just as aware of the country’s problems as you are – often painfully so. You are no longer a long voice in the wilderness, but simply one of many observers. Humbling, but also reassuring.
*
The internet has speeded up our lives in many ways, from shopping for DVDs to organising international terrorism. But it has also turned procrastination into an art form. I think we can all attest to this, students especially. With unfettered internet access comes unfettered dithering. And this is a major part of the work I do for Himal, with occasional breaks to fact check articles and write up briefs on South Asian geopolitics. But I like to think my procrastination is more refined than that of the average desk monkey. I don’t surf for Russian brides, football scores or humorous videos featuring anthropomorphic cats.
My vice is internet media – news, commentary, and the like. I try to keep abreast of world events and trends, in an effort to be more informed than everyone else. Frankly, it’s a losing game. The more you read about ethnic grievances in the Nepali Tarai or cargo cults in the Solomon Islands, the more ignorant and helpless you feel. It’s like being one step behind a fat giant, picking up the biscuit crumbs he drops behind and pretending to be satiated. Seriously, you will never be ‘on top’ of world affairs. The world is too big and your brain is too small.
However, I have become something of a connoisseur regarding internet news outlets. This, people, is the future of journalism. The bloggers shall inherit the earth – unless the newspapers and magazines continue to pump money into their websites. And some of them are looking very sleek indeed; top prize has to go to the Guardian, even if their commentariat is a ghastly coven of bunny-huggers, eco-fascists and shrill feminist hags, whom you read at your peril. Anyhow, Himal has begun to grasp the importance of the ‘hits’ made to its website, and is busy trying to sex the thing up. Indeed, most of the ‘briefs’ I write for Himal are intended solely for the website. By all means take a look:
http://www.himalmag.com/Himal-s-take-on-cross-border-news-from-northern-Southasia-for-the-week-of-July-10_dnwc83.html
*
I took another weekend in the country. Fresh air seemed like a good idea. So, I caught a bus from Ratna Park station – oh, how I will miss it – to a one-horse village called Sangkhu. From there I trekked up to a temple on top of a hill (where temples often find themselves). On the way up I met an English couple who were spending a few months teaching English in a village school nearby. With their loose clothes and bangles they had tried earnestly to ‘go native’ – the man even had a tika on his forehead – which, as with all such attempts, only emphasized their whiteness.
Once back down, I determined to walk the steep dirt-road to Nagarkot, a hill-station at 2000 metres. Half-way I wimped out and caught a bus heading up – the last one of the day – quite a human sandwich. The mist began to close in as the bus negotiated the potholes. By the time arrived I could barely see a few metres in front of me.
I got chatting to a shop owner about places to stay. After giving me his spin on the village economy – apparently men come up regularly from Kathmandu with prostitutes, to ‘have quick fuck’ in one of Nagarkot’s many ropey hotels – he suggested I stay with his family ‘not too far away.’ Well, first came a rather lengthy ride on the back of his motorbike, and then he dropped me off at a muddy trail head, where his two five-year-old-ish sons lead me for what seemed like rather a lot of minutes to their farmstead – by which time it was pitch dark. It was very much a ‘traditional’ dwelling, made entirely of mud and wood; the animals (six goats and a buffalo) slept downstairs, the family upstairs – along with me. Before bed we gathered around the stove as the housewife knocked us up some daal bhaat (rice and dhal, the Nepali staple). Yes, all very bucolic.
The next day I took the bus down to Bhaktapur, what used to be one of the three independent city states of the Kathmandu Valley – along with Patan and Kathmandu itself – before the Gurkha invasions of the eighteenth century, led by the Prithvi Narayan Shah (still highly revered as the father of Nepal), which led to the unification of Nepal as we know it. It’s a beautiful place; a rabbit-warren of wooden temples and winding back-alleys. But it rained all day, in a slow drizzle that never broke into a satisfying tantrum. My umbrella truly came into its own. From now on, it remains beside me, no matter what – my take on the Gurkha kukri knife.
I got back to the flat to receive an angry note from Suresh the servant boy. I hadn’t told him I’d be away that Sunday; I didn’t know I had the whole weekend off till Friday evening. Well, the note appeared angry; I really couldn’t read the thing. Give it a try yourself: ‘Been eat food this is I am not see list look not fine why ary you aways in Nagarkot Ben. I worke is bed why what not good food I try ok writ this coy note book.’ And so it went. It’s times like these that remind me of how very crap I am in failing to attempt the Nepali language. No excuse, really.
All for now.
You arrive in a third world country, you check the place out, go for a walk or whatever. And then it happens. You look at the mess around you – the badly behaved traffic, the sincere lack of dustbins, the dirt-caked street urchins, the emaciated pariah dogs – and a monologue comes to life in your head. ‘If I was in charge, I would do….I would introduce…I would ban…I would round up and shoot…’ It’s a high-pitched, cut-glass voice which clears its throat and starts up whenever you step outside; and it refuses to pipe down. If it wore a hat, it would be a pith helmet. A colonial hangover, a nannying impulse, the irrepressible conviction – embarrassing though it may be to the liberal mindset – that it is precisely you and your expertise, gleaned from a first world upbringing, that this benighted country needs in order to do things ‘correctly.’ The very same voice must have plagued the British East India Company, when they first decided that extending their dominion beyond the banks of the Hoogly wasn’t such a terribly bad idea. It is, ultimately, a refusal to accept things for how they are.
I thought I’d eradicated my (particularly virulent) strand of ‘If I’ syndrome during my seventh months travelling in Asia in 2007 – and this took long enough. But it was merely laying dormant, ready to erupt as soon as I stepped off the plane in Kathmandu. Like syphilis, you think it’s gone, but then it comes back and fucks up your brain. But, after a month, I think I’ve managed to tame it. This is largely through talking to Nepali people; who, you soon discover, are just as aware of the country’s problems as you are – often painfully so. You are no longer a long voice in the wilderness, but simply one of many observers. Humbling, but also reassuring.
*
The internet has speeded up our lives in many ways, from shopping for DVDs to organising international terrorism. But it has also turned procrastination into an art form. I think we can all attest to this, students especially. With unfettered internet access comes unfettered dithering. And this is a major part of the work I do for Himal, with occasional breaks to fact check articles and write up briefs on South Asian geopolitics. But I like to think my procrastination is more refined than that of the average desk monkey. I don’t surf for Russian brides, football scores or humorous videos featuring anthropomorphic cats.
My vice is internet media – news, commentary, and the like. I try to keep abreast of world events and trends, in an effort to be more informed than everyone else. Frankly, it’s a losing game. The more you read about ethnic grievances in the Nepali Tarai or cargo cults in the Solomon Islands, the more ignorant and helpless you feel. It’s like being one step behind a fat giant, picking up the biscuit crumbs he drops behind and pretending to be satiated. Seriously, you will never be ‘on top’ of world affairs. The world is too big and your brain is too small.
However, I have become something of a connoisseur regarding internet news outlets. This, people, is the future of journalism. The bloggers shall inherit the earth – unless the newspapers and magazines continue to pump money into their websites. And some of them are looking very sleek indeed; top prize has to go to the Guardian, even if their commentariat is a ghastly coven of bunny-huggers, eco-fascists and shrill feminist hags, whom you read at your peril. Anyhow, Himal has begun to grasp the importance of the ‘hits’ made to its website, and is busy trying to sex the thing up. Indeed, most of the ‘briefs’ I write for Himal are intended solely for the website. By all means take a look:
http://www.himalmag.com/Himal-s-take-on-cross-border-news-from-northern-Southasia-for-the-week-of-July-10_dnwc83.html
*
I took another weekend in the country. Fresh air seemed like a good idea. So, I caught a bus from Ratna Park station – oh, how I will miss it – to a one-horse village called Sangkhu. From there I trekked up to a temple on top of a hill (where temples often find themselves). On the way up I met an English couple who were spending a few months teaching English in a village school nearby. With their loose clothes and bangles they had tried earnestly to ‘go native’ – the man even had a tika on his forehead – which, as with all such attempts, only emphasized their whiteness.
Once back down, I determined to walk the steep dirt-road to Nagarkot, a hill-station at 2000 metres. Half-way I wimped out and caught a bus heading up – the last one of the day – quite a human sandwich. The mist began to close in as the bus negotiated the potholes. By the time arrived I could barely see a few metres in front of me.
I got chatting to a shop owner about places to stay. After giving me his spin on the village economy – apparently men come up regularly from Kathmandu with prostitutes, to ‘have quick fuck’ in one of Nagarkot’s many ropey hotels – he suggested I stay with his family ‘not too far away.’ Well, first came a rather lengthy ride on the back of his motorbike, and then he dropped me off at a muddy trail head, where his two five-year-old-ish sons lead me for what seemed like rather a lot of minutes to their farmstead – by which time it was pitch dark. It was very much a ‘traditional’ dwelling, made entirely of mud and wood; the animals (six goats and a buffalo) slept downstairs, the family upstairs – along with me. Before bed we gathered around the stove as the housewife knocked us up some daal bhaat (rice and dhal, the Nepali staple). Yes, all very bucolic.
The next day I took the bus down to Bhaktapur, what used to be one of the three independent city states of the Kathmandu Valley – along with Patan and Kathmandu itself – before the Gurkha invasions of the eighteenth century, led by the Prithvi Narayan Shah (still highly revered as the father of Nepal), which led to the unification of Nepal as we know it. It’s a beautiful place; a rabbit-warren of wooden temples and winding back-alleys. But it rained all day, in a slow drizzle that never broke into a satisfying tantrum. My umbrella truly came into its own. From now on, it remains beside me, no matter what – my take on the Gurkha kukri knife.
I got back to the flat to receive an angry note from Suresh the servant boy. I hadn’t told him I’d be away that Sunday; I didn’t know I had the whole weekend off till Friday evening. Well, the note appeared angry; I really couldn’t read the thing. Give it a try yourself: ‘Been eat food this is I am not see list look not fine why ary you aways in Nagarkot Ben. I worke is bed why what not good food I try ok writ this coy note book.’ And so it went. It’s times like these that remind me of how very crap I am in failing to attempt the Nepali language. No excuse, really.
All for now.
Tuesday, 7 July 2009
The umbrella and the Maoist
Rain. Not sure what I think of it. And there’s a fuck of a lot of it here, right now. It’s different from the rain back home – the sombre drizzle that shoves grey over the place. Here it’s something else. You get really, really wet. And quickly. You reach saturation point after a few minutes, but dry soon enough afterwards in the heat. I bought an umbrella the other day on the way to Ratna Park bus station, from an old man with deformed hands. I take it with my everywhere now; it sits in my multi-coloured Nepali bag, next to my glasses case. I’m learning to cope, I suppose. Underrated, umbrellas.
The monsoon is the only season in Nepal when the rural folk can laugh at the Kathmandu-wallahs. For most of the year, country people have to face dire poverty, state neglect, malnutrition – among other nuisances. Most of them dream of one day packing up and moving to the bright lights (power-cuts permitting) of the capital, where the cracked pavements are lined with rupees and jobs flow out of the open sewers. It must all look pretty peachy from the hills, what with the buildings and everything.
But, come the rains, Kathmandu’s streets become brown, heaving canals. Take my journey to work this morning: I took one of those Noddy-sized mini-vans, where as many people as possible – a surprising amount, in the case of Nepalis – are shoved inside before the thing starts moving; and where I must perform some pretty painful gymnastics. Yes, undignified – just a little bit – but I felt pretty smug looking through the window at the people outside. They were wading – yes, wading – through muddy water, just to get from A to B. But I had to join them at one stage, when the Noddy-van met a road closed by the police; some high-spirited students had set a few tyres alight, right after looting and burning the office of a university professor they happened to disagree with. Now, I’m no expert vandal, but I thought that the idea behind tyre-burning was spectacle – setting up a big stack of them before lighting up; that sort of thing. As it was, there were just a few scattered, solitary burning tyres about the road; they looked rather sad and pathetic. Anyhow, I arrived at work with my lower half muddy. It’s enough to make you run away and become a rice picker.
*
When most student-types go to third world countries, they do something Worthwhile. Teach little kids, build wells, save pandas from certain extinction, all that jazz. I, on the other hand, sit in an office and fact-check documents, write briefs on South Asian geopolitics, upload job advertisements to the website, occasionally journey to the water cooler; and so the day goes. I won’t be curing AIDS any time soon, and probably won’t get to go to Heaven, achieve Nirvana, or whatever other terribly nice things await terribly nice people. I’ll have to settle for the shitty alternatives.
But journalism is a noble cause in Nepal. As it is any country, I believe. But in Nepal it takes on a more heroic guise – a sort of tights and cape profession. Intimidation of journalists is something of an organised sport here. They are considered fair game by much of the political class, particularly the thuggish Maoist ex-guerrillas, handed power by an optimistic electorate in the post-conflict spring elections.
The Maoists may now find themselves in opposition to the ruling UML-led coalition, due to the resignation of top-cadre Prachanda (‘the fierce one’) from office over the ‘unconstitutional’ sacking of the conservative army chief, but they can still bring Nepal to a standstill at the click of their fingers – as they prove with the endless bandas (strikes), now more numerous than Hindu festivals. They may now have entered the ‘democratic process,’ but they wear political office like a child stomping about the house in his daddy’s shoes. It’s all just a fun little game; and their sport is to stick it to the baddies. The baddies, of course, are anyone who happens to disagree with them. In this respect, journalists are not their friends.
This is a fairly typical news item: on 1 June, the day of another enforced strike in Kathmandu, cadres of the Newar Autonomous State routinely halted vehicles bearing press logos, smashed the windows, took the keys and beat up the journalists. All to stop them reporting the hardships endured by many ordinary citizens when the city was forced to a standstill by a political group most had little sympathy with. Rocking up to cover a strike – or any other kind of political incident; a rally, for instance – is dealt with as insubordination.
But, worst of all in these cases, no one is punished, the victims go uncompensated, and groups like the Youth Communist League – the militant arm of the Maoists – only grow in strength. More pressing than corruption in Nepal is impunity – Nepal is ranked 8th on CPJ’s Impunity Index, as a country ‘where journalists are murdered on a recurring basis and governments are unable or unwilling to prosecute the killers.’ In all this, the police are little more than smartly-dressed spectators. As the YCL beats up another of their ‘class enemies,’ they merely stand by, wagging their fingers like disapproving nannies. Oh gosh, they must say to each other, just look at those rascals: at it again, beating up another innocent press-officer; what are they like?
It doesn’t help that few of the media laws that exist in Britain, defining the limits with which politicians and press can attack each other, are in place in Nepal. Neither knows how far they should go – in the absence of libel laws or anything similar – and so both play a dangerous game, taking what they can and crying foul at the slightest affront. The press is no angel either: there is rather a lot ‘yellow’ journalism among the smaller, Nepali-language papers – namely, blackmailing businessmen for hefty donations under the threat of smear campaigns. It all comes down to a question of respect, and none of this is conducive to a healthy public life in Nepal – something it so badly needs in this transitional period, where the Maoist refusal join the coalition continues the bleed the government of legitimacy. So, here I am, helping to fight the good fight. A hero of Nepal, no less.
*
An excellent female I know – who shall not be named because it would flatter her too much – suggested I should allow a little introspection into my blog. Less of the worldly, interesting stuff about Nepali history and culture; more about my feelings, or whatever. Although my instinct was to reject the idea as selling out to the current, me-centric brand of travel writing, I thought I’d give it a pop, for what it’s worth.
So, how do I FEEL? Well, there are times…in the evening, during a power cut, with candles set about me, the yellow lights of Kathmandu dotting the window pane, the sound of barking dogs rising from the pavements below; when I look to myself and think, stroking my stubble and loosing a sigh…. Okay, enough of this introspective crap. I’ll just have to work on it. END.
The monsoon is the only season in Nepal when the rural folk can laugh at the Kathmandu-wallahs. For most of the year, country people have to face dire poverty, state neglect, malnutrition – among other nuisances. Most of them dream of one day packing up and moving to the bright lights (power-cuts permitting) of the capital, where the cracked pavements are lined with rupees and jobs flow out of the open sewers. It must all look pretty peachy from the hills, what with the buildings and everything.
But, come the rains, Kathmandu’s streets become brown, heaving canals. Take my journey to work this morning: I took one of those Noddy-sized mini-vans, where as many people as possible – a surprising amount, in the case of Nepalis – are shoved inside before the thing starts moving; and where I must perform some pretty painful gymnastics. Yes, undignified – just a little bit – but I felt pretty smug looking through the window at the people outside. They were wading – yes, wading – through muddy water, just to get from A to B. But I had to join them at one stage, when the Noddy-van met a road closed by the police; some high-spirited students had set a few tyres alight, right after looting and burning the office of a university professor they happened to disagree with. Now, I’m no expert vandal, but I thought that the idea behind tyre-burning was spectacle – setting up a big stack of them before lighting up; that sort of thing. As it was, there were just a few scattered, solitary burning tyres about the road; they looked rather sad and pathetic. Anyhow, I arrived at work with my lower half muddy. It’s enough to make you run away and become a rice picker.
*
When most student-types go to third world countries, they do something Worthwhile. Teach little kids, build wells, save pandas from certain extinction, all that jazz. I, on the other hand, sit in an office and fact-check documents, write briefs on South Asian geopolitics, upload job advertisements to the website, occasionally journey to the water cooler; and so the day goes. I won’t be curing AIDS any time soon, and probably won’t get to go to Heaven, achieve Nirvana, or whatever other terribly nice things await terribly nice people. I’ll have to settle for the shitty alternatives.
But journalism is a noble cause in Nepal. As it is any country, I believe. But in Nepal it takes on a more heroic guise – a sort of tights and cape profession. Intimidation of journalists is something of an organised sport here. They are considered fair game by much of the political class, particularly the thuggish Maoist ex-guerrillas, handed power by an optimistic electorate in the post-conflict spring elections.
The Maoists may now find themselves in opposition to the ruling UML-led coalition, due to the resignation of top-cadre Prachanda (‘the fierce one’) from office over the ‘unconstitutional’ sacking of the conservative army chief, but they can still bring Nepal to a standstill at the click of their fingers – as they prove with the endless bandas (strikes), now more numerous than Hindu festivals. They may now have entered the ‘democratic process,’ but they wear political office like a child stomping about the house in his daddy’s shoes. It’s all just a fun little game; and their sport is to stick it to the baddies. The baddies, of course, are anyone who happens to disagree with them. In this respect, journalists are not their friends.
This is a fairly typical news item: on 1 June, the day of another enforced strike in Kathmandu, cadres of the Newar Autonomous State routinely halted vehicles bearing press logos, smashed the windows, took the keys and beat up the journalists. All to stop them reporting the hardships endured by many ordinary citizens when the city was forced to a standstill by a political group most had little sympathy with. Rocking up to cover a strike – or any other kind of political incident; a rally, for instance – is dealt with as insubordination.
But, worst of all in these cases, no one is punished, the victims go uncompensated, and groups like the Youth Communist League – the militant arm of the Maoists – only grow in strength. More pressing than corruption in Nepal is impunity – Nepal is ranked 8th on CPJ’s Impunity Index, as a country ‘where journalists are murdered on a recurring basis and governments are unable or unwilling to prosecute the killers.’ In all this, the police are little more than smartly-dressed spectators. As the YCL beats up another of their ‘class enemies,’ they merely stand by, wagging their fingers like disapproving nannies. Oh gosh, they must say to each other, just look at those rascals: at it again, beating up another innocent press-officer; what are they like?
It doesn’t help that few of the media laws that exist in Britain, defining the limits with which politicians and press can attack each other, are in place in Nepal. Neither knows how far they should go – in the absence of libel laws or anything similar – and so both play a dangerous game, taking what they can and crying foul at the slightest affront. The press is no angel either: there is rather a lot ‘yellow’ journalism among the smaller, Nepali-language papers – namely, blackmailing businessmen for hefty donations under the threat of smear campaigns. It all comes down to a question of respect, and none of this is conducive to a healthy public life in Nepal – something it so badly needs in this transitional period, where the Maoist refusal join the coalition continues the bleed the government of legitimacy. So, here I am, helping to fight the good fight. A hero of Nepal, no less.
*
An excellent female I know – who shall not be named because it would flatter her too much – suggested I should allow a little introspection into my blog. Less of the worldly, interesting stuff about Nepali history and culture; more about my feelings, or whatever. Although my instinct was to reject the idea as selling out to the current, me-centric brand of travel writing, I thought I’d give it a pop, for what it’s worth.
So, how do I FEEL? Well, there are times…in the evening, during a power cut, with candles set about me, the yellow lights of Kathmandu dotting the window pane, the sound of barking dogs rising from the pavements below; when I look to myself and think, stroking my stubble and loosing a sigh…. Okay, enough of this introspective crap. I’ll just have to work on it. END.
Monday, 29 June 2009
And the rains came
Kathmandu is pretty elderly; records go back thousands of years. Its official history has many yawning holes but, thankfully, Hindu/Buddhist legend is on hand to fill them in. Any event in such folklore happens on a cosmic scale – I doubt Shiva could make himself a cup of tea without drowning a continent – and the foundation of Kathmandu is no exception. I guess they need blockbuster birth stories, the cities of Nepal, otherwise everyone would pack up and leave for a holier city. Anyhow, Kathmandu’s story is no slouch:
The Kathmandu Valley was, back in the misty mists of time, a snake infested lake. Ninety-one aeons ago – to be precise – an immaculate lotus flower appeared on the surface, which the gods declared to be Swayambhu (‘Self-Created’), the abstract essence of Buddhahood. When who should rock up but Manjushri, the bodhisattva of knowledge. Drawing a very long sword, he cut a gorge at Chobar, south of Kathmandu, to drain the lake and allow humans to worship Swayambhu. As the lake receded, the lotus settled itself on a hilltop. There, Manjushri built a shrine, before hopping down to rid the valley of snakes and establish its first civilisation. Just like that.
The site of this epic feat of drainage is commemorated by a giant stupa, which sits on the hilltop with a view over all of the Kathmandu Valley. Around it are a fair few temples, guarded by cuddly stone lions. The whole complex, though officially called Swayambhu, is popularly referred to as the ‘monkey temple,’ due to the large amounts of – yes, you guessed it; gold star for you. But this name rather undersells the importance of the site; it’s rather like calling London’s St Paul’s Cathedral the pigeon cathedral. But, then again, monkeys are a bigger crowd-draw than pigeons. Frankly, I can’t fathom why anyone finds monkeys endearing. It is one of life’s greater mysteries, like the murder of JFK or why anyone likes Blackadder. Monkeys are vile, ugly little delinquents, who’d sooner rob you blind than pose for your camera. But they are encouraged in Nepali temples, being living, shitting incarnations of the god Hanuman.
*
On the outskirts of Kathmandu, near the airport, is Pashupatinath – officially Nepal’s most auspicious place to hang out. Something of a shrunken Benares, it’s an ancient – what the fuck isn’t in Nepal? – temple complex that sprawl along ghats (stone terraces) either side of the Bagmati River. As with Benares, these are cremation ghats; dead loved ones are trussed up in patterned cloth, set on a pedestal topped with sandalwood (to flavour the smell) and put to flames while a pandit mumbles Sankrit verses. The ashes are then spilled into the river, to drift into a new body or – if the deceased was an exceptionally diligent Hindu – achieve Moksha (Nirvana). This stretch of the Bagmati River is the best place in the land for your ashes to find themselves; it ups your chances of Moksha immeasurably, even if you’ve spent your lifetime machine-gunning cows. I witnessed a cremation myself. A Nepali woman was crying hysterically and beating her forehead. I tiptoed past awkwardly. And, I must say, for a sacred river the Bagmati is pretty smelly – at that time it was a muddy, rubbish-strewn, pre-monsoon trickle.
From Pashupatinath I walked a leafy route to Boudhanath, second to Swayambhu in Kathmandu’s stringent stupa hierarchy. On the way I passed a temple called Guhyeshwari; the name comes from the Sanskrit: guhya (vagina) and ishwari (goddess). That’s right: the goddess’ vagina. It’s strange, considering the prudery that prevales in both Nepali and Indian society, to come across such naked sexuality in their religion. Shiva, after all, is commonly represented in temples by a chunky, erect phallus. I wanted to get a look at the temple, pay my respects, ring a bell or two, that sort of thing. But a sign at the door sternly declared ‘Entrance only for Hindus.’ So, yes, I was not allowed inside the goddess’ vagina. Such is life.
You’ve probably seen Boudhanath stupa on a postcard somewhere; you know, the one with the painted eyes and prayer flags radiating off the spire into the surrounding square – give it a google. I arrived there in time for evening prayers. The local – mostly Tibetan – community had poured out to pace round the stupa several times, mumbling that ubiquitous Buddhist mantra: om mani padme hum; the jewel is in the lotus, roughly translated. Joining the throng was like being swept up in a whirlpool. We moved clockwise, of course, as you should while walking round any stupa – a law that also applies to spinning prayer wheels. You could climb up to a lowish level of the stupa itself, but a sign near the steps stated a rule: no entering animals. Dunno, maybe it’s a problem round here.
*
There is a great deal of toil that goes in to a monthly current affairs magazine, especially when the office is a cosy team of about ten. Overtime is often mandatory, and the weekends are divided up: the two after publication are free, while on the next two we’re asked to sacrifice a day, maybe two. So, with the July edition (go read it) wound up last Tuesday, the coming weekend was an opportunity to escape Kathmandu – to run to the hills, literally (albeit on a clapped-out bus where burnt-out speakers played obnoxious hindi film music; honestly, I’ve tried to like Bollywood music, really I have).
Negotiating the Kathmandu bus station was like drowning in a pit of slime. Asian bus stations are invariably theatres of torment; this one was par for the course. As a monsoon shower beat down, I weaved between revving buses, trailing through mud, fumes blowing in my face, in the hope of finding a bus that might – just might – be headed to Dhulikhel.
Kathmandu spreads in a sweep of bland suburbia to the far reaches of the Kathmandu Valley. But once the bus has gone over a hill or two, the natural beauty of Nepal disrobes itself. Really, it’s a stunner. The land in the central hills is heavily cultivated, defined by those iconic rice-terraces that rise in stacks up steep hillsides – actually a sign of agricultural desperation; a chronic shortage of space. The land is green, very green. Densely populated, too; the hillsides are parcelled up into infinite little allotments, attended to by women and often young children, wading through rice paddies and bending to pluck their crops, wicker baskets on their backs. Picturesque scenes that belie lives of hard, unremitting drudgery. For anything close in Britain, you’d have to turn to Thomas Hardy.
Dhulikhel is a nice sort of town. That’s all that’s really to be said: it’s rather nice. Though the old town has some fine Newari temples, carved window doors and window-frames to go admire. The guest house I stayed in was a charming, rickety little thing, one of those places that exists forever on the verge of collapse. In the evening I got chatting to the owner, a kindly old man in a traditional Nepali waistcoat and cap; both probably hadn’t been washed this century. I rather pompously announced myself as a journalist; it made for better conversation. After a while he showed me a Nepali newspaper from a few years back, with an article about young men who’d gone missing during the ten-year civil war between the Maoists and the state, which ended as recently as 2006. Featured was a montage of photos of missing young men. He pointed at one of them, a boy of about eighteen – his son. No one had seen him in over five years; he was presumed dead. ‘I am one of the many suffering,’ the old man said.
Next day I determined to walk – or, rather, trek – from Dhulikhel to the town of Panauti, passing the stupa of Namobuddha on the way. Towards the beginning I climbed up a hill to a Kali shrine – venerating the cruel destructive aspect of Parvati, Shiva’s consort. It’s supposed to be a viewpoint, with views of the high Himalaya in the far-distance. But with the early-morning monsoon mist, I could only see a few yards in front of me. Nice little shrine, though.
As I walked on the mists parted, revealing some pretty stunning views – I would go in for superlatives, but that would be a naff. I passed many bucolic little villages along the way, where kids seemed to leap out of hedgerows and demand both ‘sweeties’ and ‘one photo, please.’ I declined. There was something about taking pictures of little kids and then handing them sweets that seemed a little, erm…how shall I put it?
The mists returned a few hours later. And then came the rain. Big rain. I got really – really! – wet. Cold, too. I’d left my raincoat in the Himal office in Patan. When I began to fear pneumonia I dived into a low peasant hut to wait things out. A woman sat with a small child on a dirt floor, nodding at me while I shivered.
The rain finished, eventually, and the mists dispersed to allow sweeping views of the countryside. On I went to the Namobuddha stupa – a squat little thing, really. But, for Tibetans, it’s one of the three holiest pilgrimage sites south of the Himalaya. It commemorates the compassion of a young prince who, one fine morning, stumbled across a ravenous tigress about to eat a little child, and offered his own flesh in its place. After spinning a few prayer wheels, I trod on to Panauti, a village at the confluence of the Punyamati and Roshi streams. All such confluences are sacred in a Hindu landscape – Benares being the most famous example – and Panauti boasts stone ghats much like Pashupatinath, where the dead are ritually burnt and swept away.
I caught the bus back to Kathmandu, exhausted, and still a little wet. When I reached my flat a power cut was in action – or rather, inaction. I fumbled in the dark for candles. It had begun to feel like home.
And so ends this week’s post. Bye for now.
The Kathmandu Valley was, back in the misty mists of time, a snake infested lake. Ninety-one aeons ago – to be precise – an immaculate lotus flower appeared on the surface, which the gods declared to be Swayambhu (‘Self-Created’), the abstract essence of Buddhahood. When who should rock up but Manjushri, the bodhisattva of knowledge. Drawing a very long sword, he cut a gorge at Chobar, south of Kathmandu, to drain the lake and allow humans to worship Swayambhu. As the lake receded, the lotus settled itself on a hilltop. There, Manjushri built a shrine, before hopping down to rid the valley of snakes and establish its first civilisation. Just like that.
The site of this epic feat of drainage is commemorated by a giant stupa, which sits on the hilltop with a view over all of the Kathmandu Valley. Around it are a fair few temples, guarded by cuddly stone lions. The whole complex, though officially called Swayambhu, is popularly referred to as the ‘monkey temple,’ due to the large amounts of – yes, you guessed it; gold star for you. But this name rather undersells the importance of the site; it’s rather like calling London’s St Paul’s Cathedral the pigeon cathedral. But, then again, monkeys are a bigger crowd-draw than pigeons. Frankly, I can’t fathom why anyone finds monkeys endearing. It is one of life’s greater mysteries, like the murder of JFK or why anyone likes Blackadder. Monkeys are vile, ugly little delinquents, who’d sooner rob you blind than pose for your camera. But they are encouraged in Nepali temples, being living, shitting incarnations of the god Hanuman.
*
On the outskirts of Kathmandu, near the airport, is Pashupatinath – officially Nepal’s most auspicious place to hang out. Something of a shrunken Benares, it’s an ancient – what the fuck isn’t in Nepal? – temple complex that sprawl along ghats (stone terraces) either side of the Bagmati River. As with Benares, these are cremation ghats; dead loved ones are trussed up in patterned cloth, set on a pedestal topped with sandalwood (to flavour the smell) and put to flames while a pandit mumbles Sankrit verses. The ashes are then spilled into the river, to drift into a new body or – if the deceased was an exceptionally diligent Hindu – achieve Moksha (Nirvana). This stretch of the Bagmati River is the best place in the land for your ashes to find themselves; it ups your chances of Moksha immeasurably, even if you’ve spent your lifetime machine-gunning cows. I witnessed a cremation myself. A Nepali woman was crying hysterically and beating her forehead. I tiptoed past awkwardly. And, I must say, for a sacred river the Bagmati is pretty smelly – at that time it was a muddy, rubbish-strewn, pre-monsoon trickle.
From Pashupatinath I walked a leafy route to Boudhanath, second to Swayambhu in Kathmandu’s stringent stupa hierarchy. On the way I passed a temple called Guhyeshwari; the name comes from the Sanskrit: guhya (vagina) and ishwari (goddess). That’s right: the goddess’ vagina. It’s strange, considering the prudery that prevales in both Nepali and Indian society, to come across such naked sexuality in their religion. Shiva, after all, is commonly represented in temples by a chunky, erect phallus. I wanted to get a look at the temple, pay my respects, ring a bell or two, that sort of thing. But a sign at the door sternly declared ‘Entrance only for Hindus.’ So, yes, I was not allowed inside the goddess’ vagina. Such is life.
You’ve probably seen Boudhanath stupa on a postcard somewhere; you know, the one with the painted eyes and prayer flags radiating off the spire into the surrounding square – give it a google. I arrived there in time for evening prayers. The local – mostly Tibetan – community had poured out to pace round the stupa several times, mumbling that ubiquitous Buddhist mantra: om mani padme hum; the jewel is in the lotus, roughly translated. Joining the throng was like being swept up in a whirlpool. We moved clockwise, of course, as you should while walking round any stupa – a law that also applies to spinning prayer wheels. You could climb up to a lowish level of the stupa itself, but a sign near the steps stated a rule: no entering animals. Dunno, maybe it’s a problem round here.
*
There is a great deal of toil that goes in to a monthly current affairs magazine, especially when the office is a cosy team of about ten. Overtime is often mandatory, and the weekends are divided up: the two after publication are free, while on the next two we’re asked to sacrifice a day, maybe two. So, with the July edition (go read it) wound up last Tuesday, the coming weekend was an opportunity to escape Kathmandu – to run to the hills, literally (albeit on a clapped-out bus where burnt-out speakers played obnoxious hindi film music; honestly, I’ve tried to like Bollywood music, really I have).
Negotiating the Kathmandu bus station was like drowning in a pit of slime. Asian bus stations are invariably theatres of torment; this one was par for the course. As a monsoon shower beat down, I weaved between revving buses, trailing through mud, fumes blowing in my face, in the hope of finding a bus that might – just might – be headed to Dhulikhel.
Kathmandu spreads in a sweep of bland suburbia to the far reaches of the Kathmandu Valley. But once the bus has gone over a hill or two, the natural beauty of Nepal disrobes itself. Really, it’s a stunner. The land in the central hills is heavily cultivated, defined by those iconic rice-terraces that rise in stacks up steep hillsides – actually a sign of agricultural desperation; a chronic shortage of space. The land is green, very green. Densely populated, too; the hillsides are parcelled up into infinite little allotments, attended to by women and often young children, wading through rice paddies and bending to pluck their crops, wicker baskets on their backs. Picturesque scenes that belie lives of hard, unremitting drudgery. For anything close in Britain, you’d have to turn to Thomas Hardy.
Dhulikhel is a nice sort of town. That’s all that’s really to be said: it’s rather nice. Though the old town has some fine Newari temples, carved window doors and window-frames to go admire. The guest house I stayed in was a charming, rickety little thing, one of those places that exists forever on the verge of collapse. In the evening I got chatting to the owner, a kindly old man in a traditional Nepali waistcoat and cap; both probably hadn’t been washed this century. I rather pompously announced myself as a journalist; it made for better conversation. After a while he showed me a Nepali newspaper from a few years back, with an article about young men who’d gone missing during the ten-year civil war between the Maoists and the state, which ended as recently as 2006. Featured was a montage of photos of missing young men. He pointed at one of them, a boy of about eighteen – his son. No one had seen him in over five years; he was presumed dead. ‘I am one of the many suffering,’ the old man said.
Next day I determined to walk – or, rather, trek – from Dhulikhel to the town of Panauti, passing the stupa of Namobuddha on the way. Towards the beginning I climbed up a hill to a Kali shrine – venerating the cruel destructive aspect of Parvati, Shiva’s consort. It’s supposed to be a viewpoint, with views of the high Himalaya in the far-distance. But with the early-morning monsoon mist, I could only see a few yards in front of me. Nice little shrine, though.
As I walked on the mists parted, revealing some pretty stunning views – I would go in for superlatives, but that would be a naff. I passed many bucolic little villages along the way, where kids seemed to leap out of hedgerows and demand both ‘sweeties’ and ‘one photo, please.’ I declined. There was something about taking pictures of little kids and then handing them sweets that seemed a little, erm…how shall I put it?
The mists returned a few hours later. And then came the rain. Big rain. I got really – really! – wet. Cold, too. I’d left my raincoat in the Himal office in Patan. When I began to fear pneumonia I dived into a low peasant hut to wait things out. A woman sat with a small child on a dirt floor, nodding at me while I shivered.
The rain finished, eventually, and the mists dispersed to allow sweeping views of the countryside. On I went to the Namobuddha stupa – a squat little thing, really. But, for Tibetans, it’s one of the three holiest pilgrimage sites south of the Himalaya. It commemorates the compassion of a young prince who, one fine morning, stumbled across a ravenous tigress about to eat a little child, and offered his own flesh in its place. After spinning a few prayer wheels, I trod on to Panauti, a village at the confluence of the Punyamati and Roshi streams. All such confluences are sacred in a Hindu landscape – Benares being the most famous example – and Panauti boasts stone ghats much like Pashupatinath, where the dead are ritually burnt and swept away.
I caught the bus back to Kathmandu, exhausted, and still a little wet. When I reached my flat a power cut was in action – or rather, inaction. I fumbled in the dark for candles. It had begun to feel like home.
And so ends this week’s post. Bye for now.
Sunday, 21 June 2009
Stood up by a living goddess
To appreciate Kathmandu, you have to look past the obvious – the obvious being that it is a third-world city: chaotic, dirty, impoverished, less-than-fragrant. Okay, glad we got that out the way. Because look past this you must, for on display is one of the richest historical and artistic heritages than any world city could hope to boast. It is something of an outdoor museum. Beautiful (and ancient) Hindu and Buddhist temples and statues lurk in the most unassuming of back-alleys; locals light candles to them and clang their bells in the morning and evening. This is no ossified, neatly-packaged culture, like that of much of Europe.
There is a near-impossible amount to take in, and KTM is best attacked in piece-meal skirmishes. The old city is where it’s at, temple-wise, and is the locus of the popular, post-card image of exotic, medieval Kathmandu. Navigating it – or, more likely, getting hopelessly lost – is exhausting. The streets are narrow, dark and winding; the press of people is like the thickest of custards. Pedestrians play a delicate dance with the motorbikes and cars (largely the former) – a million near-misses a minute. My dodging skills improve daily. And there’s animals, farm animals, everywhere.
The old town seems to be crumbling around you – literally, in places. And many of the residents are selling off their antique doors and window-frames to finance new, more comfortable (but hideous) concrete blocks, often in the place of their picturesque, rickety wooden homes. Not that I’m one to begrudge Nepalis self-improvement, but…well, you know. So, people, see it while you can. You heard it from me.
At the heart of the old town – and the heart of the city itself; culturally, at least – is the Durbar Square. A ‘durbar’ is essentially a royal court – its etymology is Persian: the Shah’s noble court. It resembles an epic parade ground, suitable for elephant fights and other such courtly fun. Temples venerating different Hindu deities are dotted about the place: Shiva, Ganesh, Durga, Gorakhnath (the Shah-King lineage deity), all get a look in. A much chuckled-at feature of Nepali temples is their erotic carvings, usually placed somewhere discreet, like the struts supporting the thatched, pagoda-like roofs. There are threesomes, bestially and some truly impressive athletics to ogle at. Many disagree over their meaning: some suggest that sex is being portrayed as a tantric path to enlightenment; the union of bodies as well as of souls, that sort of thing. But a popular native belief is that the goddess of lighting is a chaste virgin, who would shy from striking at such as bawdy building.
Perched in the centre of it all is the old royal palace, the Hanuman Dhoka, much of it built by the Malla Kings in the 17th century. But the royal family relocated to a quieter spot on the outskirts in 1886, where they built an Art-Deco monstrosity. Now, of course, with the recent abolition of the monarchy by the (ironically) now-dissolved Maoist majority government, that too is empty and open to the public. Expect a withering critique of that in a future post
The Hanuman Dhoka is so named after the monkey deity from the Ramayana, who occupies a special place in the hearts of pious Nepalis. My favourite of his many exploits goes a little like this: when his beloved Lord Ram is severely wounded in one of the many, largely indistinguishable battles of the Hindu epic, Hanuman flies from Sri Lanka to the Himalayas in search of a life-restoring herb. Being a little short of time, Hanuman doesn’t waste it browsing the hillsides but simply lifts the Himalayas and flies them back to Sri Lanka. Ram is promptly cured and the two of them make passionate love on a beach. Okay, I may have made the last bit up, but a lot of sweaty homoeroticism goes on between Ram and Hanuman in the course of the tale, I kid you not. They allegedly portray the model master-retainer relationship – rather like Suresh and I – the acceptance of hierarchy and consequent duty being a key facet of Hindu Dharma (law, roughly translated). Or something like that.
The true celebrity of all the buildings in the Durbar Square is the Kurmari Chowk, the gilded temple housing Raj Kumari, the holiest of over a dozen ‘living goddesses’ in the Kathmandu Valley, worshipped as incarnations of the goddess Teluju. The Kumari selection process echoes that of the Dalai Lamas of Tibet – elders interview hundreds of girls from the Shakya Buddhist clan of goldsmiths, all aged three to five, in search of those displaying 32 auspicious signs: a body like a banyan tree, a neck like a conch shell, eyelashes like a cow’s, among other desirables. The shortlisted few are then subjected to a ceremony at midnight in the Durbar Square, where freshly-severed buffalo heads are set about them, and men in demon masks dance around and make sinister noises. The idea is to scare the shit out of them. And the little girl who doesn’t flinch, identifies the belongings of previous Kumaris and whose horoscope doesn’t clash with the King’s, is then rewarded with the privilege of being locked up inside the Kumari Chowk till puberty, only allowed outside a few times a year to be paraded around in Hindu festivals, where her feet are never allowed to touch the ground. The spirit of Teluju deserts her on her first menstruation, and she may retire to normal life. But she will find it a little tricky finding a husband, seeing that there’s a curse that any man who dares marry a Kumari will die young. Honestly, some people just have it all.
When someone slips her ‘handlers’ enough rupees, she is known to appear at one of the first floor windows, draped in auspicious red, her forehead painted red with a ‘third eye’ in the middle. This is quite a karma top-up for all involved, and the mere look on her face is alleged to answer the unspoken questions of any who gaze on her. But I, being full of unspoken questions, was not so lucky that time; and besides, there was something of the zoo about the whole thing – the windows even have grills on them. But I’m here till September, and I’m bound to catch a wave at some point – possibly even a blown kiss. Just don’t expect ant photos of the girl; it is expressly forbidden, as with the idols in the inner-sanctums of temples. For a statuette of a god, no matter how crude, is as unique as any human, and attributed with special powers of its own. Hence why they are often treated as living people: brahmins bathe them daily, feed them, even put them to bed in the evenings. To reproduce their image, through photography or otherwise, robs them of their uniqueness and so degrades their power – or so the logic goes.
Thamel, a little below the neighbourhood where I sleep, is the backpacker ghetto. It used to be Jhochhe, a.k.a. Freak Street, one of the slacker capitals of the seventies, back when it was a stop on the over-land ‘hippy-trail’ from Europe to South-east Asia. It thrived on an abundance of near-legal weed, among other things. But a government clampdown changed that, and Thamel took up the mantle. Thamel has its counterparts in most Asian capitals – Paharganj in Delhi; Sudder Street in Calcutta; Jalan Jaksa in Jakarta; and, unholiest and unholies, Bangkok’s Khao San Road – like one extended, burger-chomping family. As with its siblings, the proprietors of the Thamel’s restaurants and guest houses work on the logic that most backpackers don’t actually want to be in a foreign country. So, they have created a haven where whities can drink, eat pizza, and listen to live bands warble out Beatles songs – all the above richly deserving an inverted comma or two. After Joe-backpacker has finished his ‘steak,’ he can score some weed off one of the multitude – actually, make that ‘swarm’ – of touts, then browse shoe-box shops for pirated films, tie-dye bandanas, Buddha figurines, t-shirts with yaks on them, and other assorted shite. As the sharper of you may have grasped by now, I am not terribly enamoured of Thamel.
*
I’ve done my first week with Himal. It is wonderful to work with such intelligent, interesting people – such a change from the illiterate droids I’ve had to work with in past jobs. Things are really coming to a head with the July issue going to the printers on Tuesday. So far, I’ve been doing rather a lot of fact checking – assessing whether three or three-and-a-half million Pakistanis have been displaced in Swat, or whether So-and-So Patel is actually the Health Minister of Gujarat – which is just as much fun as it sounds. At this, I have excelled. I am really quite the fact-checker. Writers, beware.
The office is in Patan, Kathmandu’s sister city, also known by its modest Sanskrit name, Lalitpur (city of beauty), as well as its rather less delicate Newari name, Yala, meaning god-knows-what. Once upon a time it was a separate city state, with its own King and courtly culture. It has its own Durbar Square – smaller, less bustling, but more refined than Kathmandu’s. But, Kathmandu’s burgeoning suburban sprawl being what it is, Patan is now merely a borough of Greater Kathmandu. Yet it has retained a distinct identity: quieter, more Buddhist, with an even denser concentration of temples and stupas. It has always been a city of artisans; loud tapping and filing still dominates the soundscape. Some label it Kathmandu’s left-bank. It has also become Nepal’s foreign aid capital, with the UN and multiple well-meaning NGOs setting up shop.
If the calendar is to be believed, the monsoon is supposed to be well underway here. The start date is conventionally 10 June, give or take a couple of days. But odd weather in the Bay of Bengal has held the rain-clouds up, now said to be hovering over Sikkim, slowly making their way east. For now, it’s simply hot – very hot. Not Indian-plains hot, but close. However, a short, intense shower hit us on Friday; I was out on my lunch break, and had to run into a temple for shelter. This is not poncy British rain, I assure you.
All goes well with Suresh the servant boy. We continue to have our non-conversations, where I speak and he merely nods his head and says, ‘yes yes, very good.’ (Might be handy to pick up a few words of Nepali at some point.) But that kid is a master-cook in the making. He made me a mean chilli-chicken the other day. Might just have to take him home with me.
And another thing: power cuts. They happen every day, multiple times, though most noticeably in the evenings, when Kathmandu is plunged into a medieval darkness. Still, Kathmandu-wallahs can count themselves lucky to be among the 15% of Nepalis who have access to electricity at all. Me: I have truly discovered candles. To put it mildly, they are fucking excellent.
Ta-ta for now.
There is a near-impossible amount to take in, and KTM is best attacked in piece-meal skirmishes. The old city is where it’s at, temple-wise, and is the locus of the popular, post-card image of exotic, medieval Kathmandu. Navigating it – or, more likely, getting hopelessly lost – is exhausting. The streets are narrow, dark and winding; the press of people is like the thickest of custards. Pedestrians play a delicate dance with the motorbikes and cars (largely the former) – a million near-misses a minute. My dodging skills improve daily. And there’s animals, farm animals, everywhere.
The old town seems to be crumbling around you – literally, in places. And many of the residents are selling off their antique doors and window-frames to finance new, more comfortable (but hideous) concrete blocks, often in the place of their picturesque, rickety wooden homes. Not that I’m one to begrudge Nepalis self-improvement, but…well, you know. So, people, see it while you can. You heard it from me.
At the heart of the old town – and the heart of the city itself; culturally, at least – is the Durbar Square. A ‘durbar’ is essentially a royal court – its etymology is Persian: the Shah’s noble court. It resembles an epic parade ground, suitable for elephant fights and other such courtly fun. Temples venerating different Hindu deities are dotted about the place: Shiva, Ganesh, Durga, Gorakhnath (the Shah-King lineage deity), all get a look in. A much chuckled-at feature of Nepali temples is their erotic carvings, usually placed somewhere discreet, like the struts supporting the thatched, pagoda-like roofs. There are threesomes, bestially and some truly impressive athletics to ogle at. Many disagree over their meaning: some suggest that sex is being portrayed as a tantric path to enlightenment; the union of bodies as well as of souls, that sort of thing. But a popular native belief is that the goddess of lighting is a chaste virgin, who would shy from striking at such as bawdy building.
Perched in the centre of it all is the old royal palace, the Hanuman Dhoka, much of it built by the Malla Kings in the 17th century. But the royal family relocated to a quieter spot on the outskirts in 1886, where they built an Art-Deco monstrosity. Now, of course, with the recent abolition of the monarchy by the (ironically) now-dissolved Maoist majority government, that too is empty and open to the public. Expect a withering critique of that in a future post
The Hanuman Dhoka is so named after the monkey deity from the Ramayana, who occupies a special place in the hearts of pious Nepalis. My favourite of his many exploits goes a little like this: when his beloved Lord Ram is severely wounded in one of the many, largely indistinguishable battles of the Hindu epic, Hanuman flies from Sri Lanka to the Himalayas in search of a life-restoring herb. Being a little short of time, Hanuman doesn’t waste it browsing the hillsides but simply lifts the Himalayas and flies them back to Sri Lanka. Ram is promptly cured and the two of them make passionate love on a beach. Okay, I may have made the last bit up, but a lot of sweaty homoeroticism goes on between Ram and Hanuman in the course of the tale, I kid you not. They allegedly portray the model master-retainer relationship – rather like Suresh and I – the acceptance of hierarchy and consequent duty being a key facet of Hindu Dharma (law, roughly translated). Or something like that.
The true celebrity of all the buildings in the Durbar Square is the Kurmari Chowk, the gilded temple housing Raj Kumari, the holiest of over a dozen ‘living goddesses’ in the Kathmandu Valley, worshipped as incarnations of the goddess Teluju. The Kumari selection process echoes that of the Dalai Lamas of Tibet – elders interview hundreds of girls from the Shakya Buddhist clan of goldsmiths, all aged three to five, in search of those displaying 32 auspicious signs: a body like a banyan tree, a neck like a conch shell, eyelashes like a cow’s, among other desirables. The shortlisted few are then subjected to a ceremony at midnight in the Durbar Square, where freshly-severed buffalo heads are set about them, and men in demon masks dance around and make sinister noises. The idea is to scare the shit out of them. And the little girl who doesn’t flinch, identifies the belongings of previous Kumaris and whose horoscope doesn’t clash with the King’s, is then rewarded with the privilege of being locked up inside the Kumari Chowk till puberty, only allowed outside a few times a year to be paraded around in Hindu festivals, where her feet are never allowed to touch the ground. The spirit of Teluju deserts her on her first menstruation, and she may retire to normal life. But she will find it a little tricky finding a husband, seeing that there’s a curse that any man who dares marry a Kumari will die young. Honestly, some people just have it all.
When someone slips her ‘handlers’ enough rupees, she is known to appear at one of the first floor windows, draped in auspicious red, her forehead painted red with a ‘third eye’ in the middle. This is quite a karma top-up for all involved, and the mere look on her face is alleged to answer the unspoken questions of any who gaze on her. But I, being full of unspoken questions, was not so lucky that time; and besides, there was something of the zoo about the whole thing – the windows even have grills on them. But I’m here till September, and I’m bound to catch a wave at some point – possibly even a blown kiss. Just don’t expect ant photos of the girl; it is expressly forbidden, as with the idols in the inner-sanctums of temples. For a statuette of a god, no matter how crude, is as unique as any human, and attributed with special powers of its own. Hence why they are often treated as living people: brahmins bathe them daily, feed them, even put them to bed in the evenings. To reproduce their image, through photography or otherwise, robs them of their uniqueness and so degrades their power – or so the logic goes.
Thamel, a little below the neighbourhood where I sleep, is the backpacker ghetto. It used to be Jhochhe, a.k.a. Freak Street, one of the slacker capitals of the seventies, back when it was a stop on the over-land ‘hippy-trail’ from Europe to South-east Asia. It thrived on an abundance of near-legal weed, among other things. But a government clampdown changed that, and Thamel took up the mantle. Thamel has its counterparts in most Asian capitals – Paharganj in Delhi; Sudder Street in Calcutta; Jalan Jaksa in Jakarta; and, unholiest and unholies, Bangkok’s Khao San Road – like one extended, burger-chomping family. As with its siblings, the proprietors of the Thamel’s restaurants and guest houses work on the logic that most backpackers don’t actually want to be in a foreign country. So, they have created a haven where whities can drink, eat pizza, and listen to live bands warble out Beatles songs – all the above richly deserving an inverted comma or two. After Joe-backpacker has finished his ‘steak,’ he can score some weed off one of the multitude – actually, make that ‘swarm’ – of touts, then browse shoe-box shops for pirated films, tie-dye bandanas, Buddha figurines, t-shirts with yaks on them, and other assorted shite. As the sharper of you may have grasped by now, I am not terribly enamoured of Thamel.
*
I’ve done my first week with Himal. It is wonderful to work with such intelligent, interesting people – such a change from the illiterate droids I’ve had to work with in past jobs. Things are really coming to a head with the July issue going to the printers on Tuesday. So far, I’ve been doing rather a lot of fact checking – assessing whether three or three-and-a-half million Pakistanis have been displaced in Swat, or whether So-and-So Patel is actually the Health Minister of Gujarat – which is just as much fun as it sounds. At this, I have excelled. I am really quite the fact-checker. Writers, beware.
The office is in Patan, Kathmandu’s sister city, also known by its modest Sanskrit name, Lalitpur (city of beauty), as well as its rather less delicate Newari name, Yala, meaning god-knows-what. Once upon a time it was a separate city state, with its own King and courtly culture. It has its own Durbar Square – smaller, less bustling, but more refined than Kathmandu’s. But, Kathmandu’s burgeoning suburban sprawl being what it is, Patan is now merely a borough of Greater Kathmandu. Yet it has retained a distinct identity: quieter, more Buddhist, with an even denser concentration of temples and stupas. It has always been a city of artisans; loud tapping and filing still dominates the soundscape. Some label it Kathmandu’s left-bank. It has also become Nepal’s foreign aid capital, with the UN and multiple well-meaning NGOs setting up shop.
If the calendar is to be believed, the monsoon is supposed to be well underway here. The start date is conventionally 10 June, give or take a couple of days. But odd weather in the Bay of Bengal has held the rain-clouds up, now said to be hovering over Sikkim, slowly making their way east. For now, it’s simply hot – very hot. Not Indian-plains hot, but close. However, a short, intense shower hit us on Friday; I was out on my lunch break, and had to run into a temple for shelter. This is not poncy British rain, I assure you.
All goes well with Suresh the servant boy. We continue to have our non-conversations, where I speak and he merely nods his head and says, ‘yes yes, very good.’ (Might be handy to pick up a few words of Nepali at some point.) But that kid is a master-cook in the making. He made me a mean chilli-chicken the other day. Might just have to take him home with me.
And another thing: power cuts. They happen every day, multiple times, though most noticeably in the evenings, when Kathmandu is plunged into a medieval darkness. Still, Kathmandu-wallahs can count themselves lucky to be among the 15% of Nepalis who have access to electricity at all. Me: I have truly discovered candles. To put it mildly, they are fucking excellent.
Ta-ta for now.
Tuesday, 16 June 2009
Dispatch One
Now, before I attempt to be interesting or insightful – patience, people – I shall outline the what, where and why of my stay in Nepal, from 12 June till 12 September.
I landed an internship in the Kathmandu office of Himal Southasia magazine. The landing process was a puzzlement to many back home. How did it happen to me? It frankly wasn’t the done thing, like working for the local paper or, at a stretch, corrupting – sorry, teaching – little kids in Malawi. Well, it all happened very quickly. I got home one evening and there it was, the internship, perched on my doorstep, staring dolefully at me. I had to accept it. Okay…so I spotted an add on the Himal website and responded with one of those ‘I would kill a baby to work for you’ emails. Easy as that; go try it.
Himal Southasia is a high-brow, English-language, political-cultural, awesome-excellent magazine, covering the entire South Asia region, whether the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka, Naxalism in India, Maoism in Nepal, or whatever is actually happening in the Maldives. Himal has an ideological basis: regional unity, and the integrity of South Asia as a cultural and geo-political unit. You can improve yourself by reading their articles. Here’s a nice link: http://www.himalmag.com/. Click on it.
Now, before I get into the blog proper, I must state that I am here in Nepal to nurture my mind, not my soul. I abhor hippies; I think men wearing beads should be shot; I shall embrace neither Hinduism nor Buddhism; I consider yoga to be a singularly vile activity; and I have no intention of finding myself whatsoever.
And the blog’s title, for those who wondered, echoes the words the first modern-era Nepali King, Prithvi Narayan Shah, during the 18th century: ‘Nepal exists as a yam between two boulders,’ referring to Nepal’s age-old vulnerability, being wedged against the two ‘empires’ of India and China. An elaboration on the cultural and geopolitical implications of this vegetable metaphor will be delivered in a future post.
*
The flight from London: not much of interest here. The transfer at Delhi was, however, bizarre. In most national airports, getting your boarding bass for onward travel is simply a matter of rocking up to a desk and presenting your passport. In India, you have to earn the privilege. In Indira Gandhi airport I fell victim to the national sport, bureaucratic ping-pong: I was bounced from one clueless official to the next, and waited in a succession of rooms, with the vague hope that I’d eventually end up on an aeroplane. I got chatting to one of my co-sufferers – a Nepali journalist, it turned out, connected to a Nepali-language tabloid in Kathmandu. He gave me his card. So, there I was, scoring contacts before I’d even arrived.
The Kathmandu airport is the quaintest I’ve ever seen; a tiny, largely empty red-brick thing, resembling a high-school gym. No duty free shopping here. It sees no more than a couple of dozen international flights in-out each day, and locals graze livestock on nearby grassy patches, animals occasionally ambling on to the runway. Karma was waiting outside, waving a sheet of paper reading ‘Been’ – me. Karma is a friend of Ben Ayers, the chap whose apartment I’d be renting during my time in Kathmandu. Ben, according to the Porters’ Progress website, is ‘a writer, activist, amateur climber, performance artist, conservationist, part-time farmhand and founder of Porters’ Progress, a Nepali NGO dedicated to improving the lives of trekking porters.’ Quite a fellow. But I’ve never him; we got in touch through a friend of a friend of my mother’s.
The flat is rather a coup. Basic, certainly, but with a roof-top balcony and a million-dollar view over Kathmandu and the misty hills beyond. Suresh was there to meet me – my servant boy. I’ve always been a colonial fantasist – my wet-dream is to be warped back and made a tea plantation owner in the West Bengal Hills circa 1920, replete with baggy shorts and a pith helmet – so being cooked for and attended to by a cheery native more than fitted the bill. He explained, in limited English and with the help of Karma, that he’d be around twice a week – Sundays and Wednesdays – to cook, shop for me, gather my laundry and clean the flat. After Karma left, Suresh told me a little about himself: ‘I come from village, in hills. My family very low. We have no so much land. I am first to leave and come Kathmandu and try get education.’ He had another job as a cook in a guest house, I just about gathered, and learnt English at some college in the evenings. He’s twenty, like me, and possibly the sweetest man I’ve ever met. We shall get along famously.
*
Now, I haven’t taken you quite up to the present. And I have described virtually nothing of Kathmandu. But the evening wears on and I grow weary. Suffice to stay, I’ve started at Himal and explored Kathmandu a little further. All is well and good, and I’m negotiating the power-cuts like a man. Expect an update soon.
All the best.
I landed an internship in the Kathmandu office of Himal Southasia magazine. The landing process was a puzzlement to many back home. How did it happen to me? It frankly wasn’t the done thing, like working for the local paper or, at a stretch, corrupting – sorry, teaching – little kids in Malawi. Well, it all happened very quickly. I got home one evening and there it was, the internship, perched on my doorstep, staring dolefully at me. I had to accept it. Okay…so I spotted an add on the Himal website and responded with one of those ‘I would kill a baby to work for you’ emails. Easy as that; go try it.
Himal Southasia is a high-brow, English-language, political-cultural, awesome-excellent magazine, covering the entire South Asia region, whether the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka, Naxalism in India, Maoism in Nepal, or whatever is actually happening in the Maldives. Himal has an ideological basis: regional unity, and the integrity of South Asia as a cultural and geo-political unit. You can improve yourself by reading their articles. Here’s a nice link: http://www.himalmag.com/. Click on it.
Now, before I get into the blog proper, I must state that I am here in Nepal to nurture my mind, not my soul. I abhor hippies; I think men wearing beads should be shot; I shall embrace neither Hinduism nor Buddhism; I consider yoga to be a singularly vile activity; and I have no intention of finding myself whatsoever.
And the blog’s title, for those who wondered, echoes the words the first modern-era Nepali King, Prithvi Narayan Shah, during the 18th century: ‘Nepal exists as a yam between two boulders,’ referring to Nepal’s age-old vulnerability, being wedged against the two ‘empires’ of India and China. An elaboration on the cultural and geopolitical implications of this vegetable metaphor will be delivered in a future post.
*
The flight from London: not much of interest here. The transfer at Delhi was, however, bizarre. In most national airports, getting your boarding bass for onward travel is simply a matter of rocking up to a desk and presenting your passport. In India, you have to earn the privilege. In Indira Gandhi airport I fell victim to the national sport, bureaucratic ping-pong: I was bounced from one clueless official to the next, and waited in a succession of rooms, with the vague hope that I’d eventually end up on an aeroplane. I got chatting to one of my co-sufferers – a Nepali journalist, it turned out, connected to a Nepali-language tabloid in Kathmandu. He gave me his card. So, there I was, scoring contacts before I’d even arrived.
The Kathmandu airport is the quaintest I’ve ever seen; a tiny, largely empty red-brick thing, resembling a high-school gym. No duty free shopping here. It sees no more than a couple of dozen international flights in-out each day, and locals graze livestock on nearby grassy patches, animals occasionally ambling on to the runway. Karma was waiting outside, waving a sheet of paper reading ‘Been’ – me. Karma is a friend of Ben Ayers, the chap whose apartment I’d be renting during my time in Kathmandu. Ben, according to the Porters’ Progress website, is ‘a writer, activist, amateur climber, performance artist, conservationist, part-time farmhand and founder of Porters’ Progress, a Nepali NGO dedicated to improving the lives of trekking porters.’ Quite a fellow. But I’ve never him; we got in touch through a friend of a friend of my mother’s.
The flat is rather a coup. Basic, certainly, but with a roof-top balcony and a million-dollar view over Kathmandu and the misty hills beyond. Suresh was there to meet me – my servant boy. I’ve always been a colonial fantasist – my wet-dream is to be warped back and made a tea plantation owner in the West Bengal Hills circa 1920, replete with baggy shorts and a pith helmet – so being cooked for and attended to by a cheery native more than fitted the bill. He explained, in limited English and with the help of Karma, that he’d be around twice a week – Sundays and Wednesdays – to cook, shop for me, gather my laundry and clean the flat. After Karma left, Suresh told me a little about himself: ‘I come from village, in hills. My family very low. We have no so much land. I am first to leave and come Kathmandu and try get education.’ He had another job as a cook in a guest house, I just about gathered, and learnt English at some college in the evenings. He’s twenty, like me, and possibly the sweetest man I’ve ever met. We shall get along famously.
*
Now, I haven’t taken you quite up to the present. And I have described virtually nothing of Kathmandu. But the evening wears on and I grow weary. Suffice to stay, I’ve started at Himal and explored Kathmandu a little further. All is well and good, and I’m negotiating the power-cuts like a man. Expect an update soon.
All the best.
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